profanity in English must be tough
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Our profanities are multi-purpose and it has to be confusing; I'm not sure about other languages, but it must be confusing for some people who haven't grown up around this kind of talk:
I haven't seen this video in a long time and it popped up on my feed; I can't help but laugh almost non-stop through this video.
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@gin-san lol... I've never seen this before and before even starting the video I was like, "it's mostly just 'fuck'"
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Piss is my favorite, even though it's not that foul. But it does seem like every curse word has a secret meaning.
Fuck = Sex
Ass = Butt/Donkey
Bitch = Female DogDid I mention this may be NSFW?
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@gin-san said in profanity in English must be tough:
this video in a long time and it popped up on my feed; I can't help but laugh almost non-
A friend of mine married a Polish woman, and I remember going to a party at their house where he introduced her to a mutual coworker named Dick, and she cracked up laughing and had to leave the room for a bit to compose herself. Later, she explained to me that she thought that word meant the same as "penis" and didn't understand why someone would name their kid after genitalia.
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It helps to remember that profanity isn't science; it's art. But like all art, practice makes perfect...
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That was funny but I gotta think profanity in English must be mundane compared with other languages. It's just fu@k this or fu@k that. I don't know other languages but I'm guessing they have more poetic, elegant, and literary profanity.
I just watched Train to Busan and there was profanity translated as "Fuck". I wonder what the actual Korean was. I do know the English subtitles were not a word for word translation of the actual Korean being spoken.
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@vincentmalamute the dutch swear in diseases and mental disorders....we're an unpleasant bunch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_profanity -
Nah, it's pretty fuckin' easy.
When in doubt, insert "fuck" and you'll be grammatically fuckin' correct. Fuck can be a noun (Eat me, you fuck), verb (Fuck you), adjective (Look at that fuckin' idiot), adverb (You see what he fuckin' did?) or all-purpose modifier.
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@old-busted-hotness The funny thing is you could make your example sentence using just Fuck in all the versions you mentioned and a pronoun. Fucking fucker fuckin fucked fuckin fucks.
Nevermind, you didn't need the pronoun either. -
@adversemartyr You're absolutely fucking right.
Likewise, shit is a good all-purpose swear. Noun: I don't give a shit. Verb: I shit on you. Adjective: What a shitty thing to do. Adverb use is pretty rare, though.
If you're feeling really salty, you can compound them: That fuckin' shit is really strong.
Either can be combined with "head" or "face" as an insult: Fuckhead or shithead interchangeable, or you can use the British term "fucked in the head." Shitface and fuckface are falling out of favor lately, except for "getting shitfaced" as a euphemism for drunk.
If you want to add a little UK flair to your swearing, throw some "cunt"s in there. (Don't be a cunt.) Scots tend to use it as a synonym for "friend," (Hey, cunt) so be careful.
Personally, I find it fascinating to see what different cultures use as swears and insults. Guy from Croatia told me the worst thing a Croat can call someone is a jackass.
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@old-busted-hotness Guy from Croatia must be fucking bad at cussing. There are dozens of words one can call someone, and so many more words and phrases to describe actions, usually towards one's mother, which are so bad that I won't translate them here.
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@old-busted-hotness My brother-in-law laughed every time in the beer aisle when he visited the USA. Coors is a not so polite word in Bulgarian for (I think) female anatomy.
And my wife would rarely say she wanted a Coors lite. She usually pointed to it on the menu. -
@musashi66 That's good to know. I thought jackass was pretty weak.
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This was from an old punk rock comp CD I had in high school. -
@vincentmalamute I don't know enough about Korean to know if it's a literal translation, but "fuck" is essentially 씨발 (ssi-bal, pronounced like "she" for the first part and "bal" is more like an "ah" sound as opposed to an "uh" or "aw" sound that the -al has in English).
Probably one of the most frequently heard Korean profanities.
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@mastermario I never really thought much about the context of swear words but seeing it broken down like that was so amusing. The "for fuck's... sa-ke?" killed me.
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@adversemartyr I guess the car industry is no stranger to this, like the Toyota MR2 in France (the Toyota "merde") and I've heard the Chevy Nova in Spanish speaking countries was also an issue, although I don't know if that's true or not.
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@farscythe said in profanity in English must be tough:
the dutch swear in diseases and mental disorders....we're an unpleasant bunch
Who knew? The Dutch seem so nice!
@gin-san said in profanity in English must be tough:
씨발 (ssi-bal, pronounced like "she" for the first part and "bal" is more like an "ah" sound as opposed to an "uh" or "aw" sound that the -al has in English)
Thanks! I took a year of Korean in college. Nearly flunked out - I don't have an affinity for language. With the help of your hints, I'm finding I can still actually recognize those characters!
For some reason, my memory seems to be saying that second word starts with a 'p' rather than 'b'? You obviously know more than I do and this is a memory glitch on my part.
The "for fuck's... sa-ke?" killed me.
That was great.
